No-fuss anxiety tips #13: Value Your Values
Welcome to blog number 13 of 20 in this quick-read series on anxiety. Each post aims to give you actionable ideas on how you can get a handle on your anxiety through quick read, no-fuss tips. In this article, we’ll be looking at how your values can be a real resource when it comes to living with greater ease and less angst. Getting in touch with your values and using them as a way to make choices about your own life can help navigate the anxiety wobbles.
What these tips won’t do is explore the origins and purpose of anxiety for you – this type of deeper exploration is what counselling offers. That said, having strategies for managing anxiety is a great place to start. So, let’s get dive into another technique: value your values.
Values as your guide to a life well-lived
Values are the principles we try to live by - the things we hold important that influence what we do. They are the WHY of our actions. Different people have different values. Perhaps you value justice, honesty and connection? Or maybe your values include spontaneity, creativity and freedom? You might prize success, recognition and resilience most?
Living in ways that conflict with your values
If you find yourself living in ways that don’t align with your values, you are likely to feel a sense of unease and an anxiousness. Stress and anxiety resulting from feeling a need to act in ways that conflict with personal values was a phenomenon noted within healthcare workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic (D'Alessandro et al., 2022). Some healthcare and frontline workers were placed in positions where they needed to violate deeply held moral values due to systemic constraints. The impact of has a name - “moral injury” - and we know that anxiety can be one of the features of moral injury (Jinkerson, 2016). Living in ways that conflict with your values can lead to feeling on edge, conflicted and in a bind.
Living in alignment with your values
In contrast, if you can be clear about your values and then make choices that allow you to live these out, you can increase the likelihood of experiencing greater contentment and a decrease in panic, fear and anxiety. Making conscious and active choices about how you live in alignment with your values can help create a sense of autonomy and self-ownership of your own life. Valued living - or living in line with your personal values - has been shown to help reduce feelings of tension and stress that can exacerbate anxiety (Creswell et al., 2005).
Take time to identify your core values
If you are going to value your values, you need to know what they are first! Taking time to identify your core values is a powerful self-development tool. Even if other people, or even your own critical voice, disagrees with your decision, once you know and respect your own values, you can stand firm in knowing that you have made a decision that is right for you. You can feel confident in your integrity, rather than experiencing anxious rumination as to whether you did the “right thing”?
Below is a long list of common core values. Which words stand out to you as what you value in life? You can use the list to take an audit of your own values.
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Authenticity
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Achievement
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Adventure
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Authority
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Autonomy
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Balance
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Beauty
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Compassion
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Community
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Creativity
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Challenge
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Curiousity
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Determination
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Fairness
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Faith
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Fame
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Friendship
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Family
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Fun
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Growth
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Happiness
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Honesty
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Humour
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Justice
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Kindness
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Leadership
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Learning
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Love
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Loyalty
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Openness
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Popularity
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Optimism
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Peace
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Pleasure
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Recognition
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Respect
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Responsibility
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Security
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Service
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Status
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Trustworthy
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Wealth
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Wisdom
〰️ Authenticity 〰️ Achievement 〰️ Adventure 〰️ Authority 〰️ Autonomy 〰️ Balance 〰️ Beauty 〰️ Compassion 〰️ Community 〰️ Creativity 〰️ Challenge 〰️ Curiousity 〰️ Determination 〰️ Fairness 〰️ Faith 〰️ Fame 〰️ Friendship 〰️ Family 〰️ Fun 〰️ Growth 〰️ Happiness 〰️ Honesty 〰️ Humour 〰️ Justice 〰️ Kindness 〰️ Leadership 〰️ Learning 〰️ Love 〰️ Loyalty 〰️ Openness 〰️ Popularity 〰️ Optimism 〰️ Peace 〰️ Pleasure 〰️ Recognition 〰️ Respect 〰️ Responsibility 〰️ Security 〰️ Service 〰️ Status 〰️ Trustworthy 〰️ Wealth 〰️ Wisdom
Give self-affirmations a try?
Once you know your core personal values, you could try affirmations as a way to embed and really connect with and value your values. Self-affirmations are statements that you say to yourself (either out loud, or internally, or via written words) that affirm a quality you posess or are keen to work towards. Self-affirmations are positive and encouraging, rather than critical. They are usually expressed in the present tense. And we know that self-affirmation statements can help to redirect away from anxious thoughts and feeling out of control by anchoring the mind on the qualities and values that are within our control and part of our personal values (cascio, 2016).
If I were going to create a couple of self-affirmations for myself, based around my personal values, they might look and sound like this:
“I’m Claire, and I value inclusion”
“I’m Claire, and I’m compassionate”.
“I’m Claire, and I value authenticity”.
What might your own personal values based self-affirmations look like? And how do you feel about saying these to yourself to help embed and reinforce the things that make you who you are in the world?
Next steps?
To help develop your repertoire of managing anxiety, look out for more mini blogs within this series. The next article, #14, explores how putting the focus on what you have control over can help when anxiety strikes. And, if you’d like to talk through how counselling can help you with a deeper exploration of your anxiety, do make contact with me, Claire Law.
I’m a BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist offering professional counselling and psychotherapy in Preston, Lancashire and online for adults based in the UK.
We can talk through how online counselling or face-to-face counselling at my therapy room in Preston could be helpful for you in managing your anxiety and getting to the roots of what lies behind your anxiety. I’d love to hear from you.
References:
Cascio, C.N., O'Donnell, M.B., Tinney, F.J., Lieberman, M.D., Taylor, S.E., Strecher, V.J., Falk, E.B. (2016). Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related processing and reward and is reinforced by future orientation. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2016 Apr;11(4):621-9.
Creswell, J.D., Welch, W.T., Taylor, S.E., Sherman, D.K., Gruenewald, T.L., Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychol Sci. 2005 Nov;16(11):846-51.
D'Alessandro, A. M., Ritchie, K., McCabe, R. E., Lanius, R. A., Heber, A., Smith, P., Malain, A., Schielke, H., O'Connor, C., Hosseiny, F., Rodrigues, S., & McKinnon, M. C. (2022). Healthcare Workers and COVID-19-Related Moral Injury: An Interpersonally-Focused Approach Informed by PTSD. Frontiers in psychiatry, 12, 784523.
Jinkerson, J. D. (2016). Defining and assessing moral injury: A syndrome perspective. Traumatology, 22(2), 122–130.